I held your heart in mine for about a week
by pixie paramount
Summary: When all else failed, your hand held mine. — Peter/Susan. Movie/book-verse. Gift!fic, for Caitlan. One-shot.


**STANDARD DISCLAIMER APPLIED. **

**I held your heart in mine for about a week  
****by:** _pixie paramount_ (5/?/2008, 6:24 PM)  
_Chronicles of Narnia_, Peter/Susan & you, the blood in my bones, and the blisters on my lips are all I have

* * *

i.  
She remembers how London would erupt in bombs, how the sound of engines rumbling in the sky like thunder was a warning, how everything would change when the papers scattered in the streets: War in upon us, war is here, war is now.

(She can remember, vaguely, how her father left them in his pristine uniform. Leaving them with a kiss on the cheek and a whisper between him and Peter, _you're the man of the house now, Peter_ and _take care of them for me_.

Her mother would allow herself to cry at night. His pillow held tightly to her and her sobs muffled by fabric and the hard-wood door. She remembers curling into her arms and crying into her shoulder, _it'll be okay; right_?)

She misses London. Misses the boys who would smile, shyly, and say how pretty, how smart, how nice that skirt, that shirt looks on her. She misses this exchange of shy smiles and shy words.

On cold moonlit nights in Narnia, she will remind herself of a London erupting, dancing with flames and disheveled earth with the trees swaying, violently, and the leaves falling one by one.

_I'm afraid to grow up forgetting_, she tells him. _I don't even remember mother's name_. And it hurts her, how Lucy doesn't even remember what it was like to have a mother.

* * *

It doesn't distress Peter in the least when she confides this in him, one night. Aslan gone and her heart heavy, the memories fading as the days grow longer, and they grow along with it.

She'll take his hand on these nights. Narnia is soothing; Narnia is kind—unlike London, unlike the war. _How is mother, is father even alive, did they survive_?

And these moments—few and many alike, like Lucy tumbling in the night—are how it all begins; her hand tightens in his and he thinks how small, how fragile, how he needs to protect them, her, for a nameless mother and a faceless father; because he promised them, once. In London, before Narnia.

* * *

ii.  
The grass is cool and Narnia is warm and beautiful with summer. There are flowers—few and scattered, alive and bright—that have found themselves tangled in her hair by an experimental Lucy, who sports the same mass of flower-tangles herself, as she dances with Mr. Tumnus and Ed not too far off, watching them like a hawk.

She giggles behind her hand, warm cider sliding down her throat, when someone taps her shoulder.

_Would you like to dance_? He asks her. His face is flushed and her looks more like a boy than a king, his crown dipping slightly to the left and his hair messy and in his eyes.

Her feet hurt and she doesn't dance—not really—but she crumbles at that smile, those dimples, and takes his hand in hers, leading him to the bone fire.

(And when night falls like a curtain on Narnia, Susan stares up at the night sky and imagines the feel of his body against hers, his smile, and, oh, her heart races.)

* * *

iii.  
_We're the only ones—like Adam and Eve where, once_.

(And it scares him how, as the time slows and the days become longer, their hair just a tad longer and their limbs more chiseled, more defined, these thoughts come and go but it feels the same.

There was a girl once, he doesn't remember her name—doesn't remember much, nowadays—but he remembers this: her smile made his heart warm and his chest ache and when she took his hand, he felt small and weak; when they would walk to school, together, he would do everything to impress her.

Like he was saying: _Choose me instead of him, give your heart to me_.

But than there was gun powder and war and Narnia and a bigger, greater war, and all that was forgotten.

But it's still the same, what he feels. It's still the same.)

* * *

Once, this kiss could be considered a sin.

Vile, ugly, dirty.

* * *

iv.  
It takes everything in him not to glance at her, not too look at her, to keep himself from staring at her.

Her hair is messy and her lips are kiss-swollen (but, really, that might just be her annoying habit of biting her bottom lip when thinking), she's breathless and in love and—

It's none of his business, anyway.

* * *

v.  
Her dress is somewhere. In a pool of clothing somewhere; it'll wrinkle if she doesn't get it before the night is through.

But his body is warm and his hair is soft between her fingers, a-and—

Oh; it hurts.

"P-peter…"

He kisses her, running his calloused hands along her ribs, ghosts of breath leave her—"Peter, peter, peter…"—and he promises her the world, the stars, _shh, it'll be alright_.

And it is.

* * *

**for:** ninja . butterfly, for being the best bb/wifey/husband a girl could find. ;)  
**author's note:** why hello there, new fandom


End file.
